Sentence+Gems

=Sentence Gems=

Here is a page for you to post sentence gems (Anderson p.40-41) that you've come across in your reading. Be sure to cite the source and explain why you chose it as a gem.

In // Mecha //// nically Inclined ////, // Anderson explains that he wants students to "hunt down sentences that work, strings of sentences, even perhaps paragraphs that make the reader stop, bend over, pick up the gem and see it in the light from many angles" (Anderson p. 40).


 * Example:**

"Miss Pefko wasn't used to chatting with someone as important as Dr. Breed and she was embarassed. Her gait was affected, becoming stiff and chickenlike. Her smile was glassy, and she was ransacking her mind for something to say, finding nothing in it but used Kleenex and costume jewelry." - //Cat's Cradle//, Kurt Vonnegut, p.33

//I chose this sentence because I love the imagery and humor, particularly of the final sentence. The metaphor of her mind as a cluttered handbag is biting. I think the syntax of that final sentence makes it stronger; Vonnegut saves the punchline of the sentence for the end (a periodic sentence). I also like the way Vonnegut captures the frantic feeling of not knowing how to respond to someone important.// ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sharene Shaw's Sentence Gems

"Everything which happened before my meeting her was a premonition; everything I did after I killed her was an apology, not for killing her, but for the lie that was my life. I was 25 when I met her at a party in Chelsea"

//Season of Migration to the North,// Tayeb Salih, p. 26

I choose this quote because of the complexity of the sentence and the author's use grammar. I think think that this is a good sentence to use to explain syntax and rhetoric. The author is using this compound - complex sentence to show the complexity of the authors feelings towards the woman that he killed and how it changed him. It is then followed by a string of simple sentences that describe them meeting. This points to in the story how unimportant the narrator actually meeting the woman, but how his impacted her and continues to impact her even though she is dead.

" My mamma dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me. I'm big. I can't move fast enough. By time I get back from the well, the water be warm, By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time. He don't say nothing. He set there by the bed holding her hand an crying, talking about don't leave me, don't go."

//The Color Purple,// Alice Walker. p.3

I choose this quote because of its constant use of simple sentences and the lack of control that the narrator has over her grammar. The use of the simple sentences develop a matter of fact tone.Everything is in the narrator's life that is bad she is use to because bad things just happen to her.She is use to the treatment she gets from her mother and her step- father. The use of the simple sentence also makes the narrator seem child-like. The word- choice is powerful as well because it shows how limited her education is.

Casey Goodson's Sentence Gems:

"They were running on the plain harrying the antelope and the antelope moved like phantoms in the snow and circled and wheeled and the dry powder blew about them in the cold moonlight and their breath smoked paley in the cold as if they burned with some inner fire and the wolves twisted and turned and leapt in silence such that they seemed of another world entire”

//The Crossing//, Cormac McCarthy, p. 4

I chose this piece because of McCarthy’s manipulation of the sentence and grammar rules. With this in contrast to the convention of asyndeton, McCarthy creates rhythmically intense movement with the repeated use of the coordinating conjunction “and.” The scenes bleed into one another and the connection this creates is symbolic of spatial and almost biological reciprocity. While the listing quality might throw-off certain readers, the intention and specificity of these moves creates an environment inter-worldly environment.

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.”

// The Bell Jar //, Sylvia Plath

I chose this sentence because of the power it evokes. Plath’s specific word choice and use of personification is both mesmerizing and simply focused. The heart not only speaks but brags, “I am,” and the repetition of this exclamation reitifies the beating of our hearts. Plath uses language that is transparent, using figurative moves that converse and relate to the reader.


 * Kelsey Sparks**

"if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.” Donna Tartt, The //Goldfinch//

//I chose this excerpt because as I read the last sentence, I realized that people often don't admit that they like something just because they do. It's almost as if we need a reason for everything. Whenever I'm touring a museum and see a piece of art that catches my eye, I can't always explain why I like it but it does just speak to me. I love the imagery and honesty in her words.//

"He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, //The Great Gatsby//

//I also chose this excerpt because it is from one of my favorite books. Throughout the entire book, Fitzgerald uses incredible vocabulary, which makes the reader truly think about each sentence. Even something as simple as smile can be described in such an intense way. While reading this passage, I could vividly picture Gatsby's smile.//

////
 * Krissy Reyes**

"It was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.” ― [|Kate Chopin], // [|The Awakening] //

I chose this sentence because the comparison of being fixated on someone to both a lingering, fading mist and also to an overwhelming intensity so beautifully captures the complex desires of the female protagonist. The imagery here is conflicting but true to human emotion and its power to rise and fall uncontrollably. I like that the complex structure of the sentence mirrors her thoughts through the use of commas to create pauses and to show connection.

"And of course you swore you wouldn’t do it. You swore you wouldn’t. You swore you wouldn’t. And you did." -Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her

I chose this sentence because Diaz uses the power of repetition to emphasize the importance of promising not doing something. Just as easily as the pattern of the sayi g the same sentence over and over can be broken, so can the trust between two people. In its simplicity, the sentence shares so much about the relationship of the narrator and partner, one that struggles with loyalty and truthfulness.
 * Mica Fidler**
 * Mica Fidler**

"Through pollinated air she saw a glorious being coming up the road. In her former blindness she had known him as shiftless Johnny Taylor, tall and lean. That was before the golden dust of pollen had beglamored his rags and her eyes." __Their Eyes Were Watching God__, Zora Neale Hurston

//I chose this excerpt because of its vivid, yet pithy description. Through adjectives like "pollinated" and "golden," nouns like "blindness," and verbs like "beglamored," Hurston packs a symbolic punch with each word she uses. I love how she paints a picture of young lust and the "golden dust" puberty can sprinkle on our former understanding of the world. //

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass Iove, If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And filter and fibre your blood.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Missing me one place, search another, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I stop somewhere waiting for you. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Song of Myself__, Walt Whitman

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So often excerpts of alliteration that we give to students can feel canned and childish. This example features alliteration, but it is in service of the greater meaning of the text. The voice is not childish, but in fact the opposite. It is the voice of an earth-bound sage, with each "f" digging himself deeper and deeper into the soil we tread on. Other alliterative nods, "Missing me" and "stop somewhere" continue the melody and rhythm of the guidance, easing the student out of the lesson after the flourish of f's in the middle. // __**Alisha Ravi:**__
 * _**

__"But poised on the edge of the sublime, I faced a somewhat ridiculous dilemma: How best to get out there? The hatch was small and circular, but with all my tools strapped to my chest and a huge pack of oxygen tanks and electronics strapped onto my back, I was square. Square astronaut, round hole." //-// //An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth,// Chris Hadfield, p.1.__

__I chose this passage because it was so unexpected. In this sentence, Hadfield creates an image about his experience in space that can be applied to a variety of situations, and a variety of people. I think the irony in the statement creates humour, and brings an outer world experience accessible to a wide audience. The short sentence at the end of the passage manages not only to drive the point home, but to elicit a chuckle from the reader.__

__"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" //- The Great Gatsby,// F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. 184.__

__I chose this sentence because I love the consonance that is used in this sentence. The hard sounds on the words like "beat", "boat", "borne" and "back", contrast with the soft sounds in "ceaselessly". When reading the sentence aloud, these words the flow of a boat drifting in the water.__

__**Anne Lenzini:**__

__ "Nor do they give you near enough napkins, considering how messy lobster is to eat, especially when you’re squeezed onto benches alongside children of various ages and vastly different levels of fine-motor development—not to mention the people who’ve somehow smuggled in their own beer in enormous aisle-blocking coolers, or who all of a sudden produce their own plastic tablecloths and try to spread them over large portions of tables to try to reserve them (the tables) for their little groups. And so on." - "[|Consider the Lobster]" by David Foster Wallace, page 2 __

__ // Foster Wallace was sent to Maine to report on the Maine Lobster Festival, and writes a review that turns into a psychological quandary about the morality of eating lobster. It is hilarious. This quotation that appears on page two I found particularly amusing due to the imagery that brings the scene to life; almost every American has been to a festival where they are among the very people Foster Wallace describes in detail above (many of us have been those very people). The hilarity of the citation is partially due to its following a description of lobster as "a posh delicacy" eaten with "special long skinny forks to push out tail meat", which so starkly contrasts with the description of the festival itself. The "downers" about the festival described above build on one another in just one sentence until the reader is cringing on the bench alongside Foster Wallace. // __

__ " Now, I tell my sister, these poles, these wires, do not look the same to me. Nothing is innocent, my sister reminds me. But nothing, I would like to think, remains unrepentant.__

__One summer, heavy rains fell in Nebraska and some green telephone poles grew small leafy branches."__ __- "[|Time and Distance Overcome]" by Eula Biss__

__//This entire article by Eula Biss is incredibly moving. It discusses the fight against the creation of the telephone pole, only to juxtapose it against another American invention, lynching. The text ends with these two, simple lines. I appreciate her use of syntax. The first sentence, with its many commas, causes the reader to pause and read each component. "These poles, these wires" were designed to "overcome time and distance" and yet they were used to hang African Americans by white mobs. Her use of commas causes the reader to reflect on the role these poles and wires played in our nation's history. Starting the second line with "Nothing is innocent" states a truth, and yet the parallel sentence that follows "nothing [...] remains unrepentant" offers a sort of desperate hope to be able to make-up for the mistakes of the past. The last line continues this sense of hope or rebirth through this almost pastoral imagery.//__

__**Mackenzie Magee:**__

__“On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.”-“The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien, p. 9.__

__I chose this sentence because of the complex layers of meaning O’Brien creates through the structure. The starting idea of this sentence is simply “he would yell at his men,” but through commas O’Brien adds beautiful details that complicate the character as well as the sentence. Slowly, we learn that the protagonist is not present while he yells at his men, and frequently drifts into daydreams. Just as the commas drift along the sentence, so does the content of the sentence drive us deeper into the subconscious of the character, until we are left with a complete disassociation from reality where the character is “carrying nothing.” This sentence is also beautiful because the concluding clause congruently complicates and coincides with the theme of the story—cataloguing “the things they (the characters) carry.” Here, at this pinnacle point in the sentence and the short story, the character is subconsciously free of the weight of war—the weight that he and his men have been forced to physically, mentally and emotionally carry. The only solace for the protagonist is mental, and this sentence illustrates this truth through commas that add increasingly more intimate details about the character.__

__ “Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on”-“Incoming Tide”, Elizabeth Strout, p. 47. __ __ This sentence struck me initially because of its repetition, and its use of the imperative: the narrator is not suggesting that you look, he is demanding that you look. In this moment of the story, the narrator is addressing himself, ordering himself to look at something that is painful to him. The repetition of sentence structure with the slight change from “live” to “hold on” reflects the subtle shift of importance in the mind of the narrator: the important part is not exactly that she wanted to live, but that she wanted to “hold on” to life, to grasp it and not let it slip away. The almost identical clauses separated by one comma mirror the narrator’s mental struggle to grasp what exactly he is observing, and why it is meaningful to him. __

__**Mark Munro**__

__“But her head was not lying on the yellow kitchen counter, severed from her body, with the rest of her scattered into time: her torso preserved in mud near the Delaware Water Gap, her legs in a granite outcrop in the Ahaggar massif, her hands in the shifting sands of the Imperial Sand Dunes, and an exquisite sight are all these presentations to be found in that thing called Nature but Mr. Sweet could never see this, for it frightened him to leave his familiar surroundings, the Shirley Jackson house and all the nice furnishings in it: the sofa and chairs that were covered in cloth that Mrs. Sweet had purchased at the Waverley factory outlet in Adams, Massachusetts, and the upholstery itself, which had been done by a man who lived in White Creek, New York.” //See Now Then//, Jamaica Kincaid, p. 19.__

__//Kincaid's sentence resonates with me because she manages to construct place through her syntax. The image of a dismembered head at first seems at odds with kitsch of yellow formica, but Kincaid goes on to shock her reader by spreading Mrs. Sweet's limbs through time and space. Her reader then forgets about her initial juxtaposition between countertop and cranium. Within a single sentence, she contrasts foreign and domestic, natural and unnatural. The tension within this sentence strikes me because of the cadence that her syntax creates for the reader.//__

__“On the floor at the foot of the stairs was a large, vividly red spill of liquid—possibly raspberry syrup, possibly transmission fluid. I tried without success to pick up its smell. Instead I was hit by the smell of Russia, one I’ve encountered often since, all over that country. There’s a lot of diesel fuel in it, and cucumber peels, and old tea bags, and sour milk, and a sweetness—currant jam, or mulberries crushed into the waffle treads of heavy boots—and fresh wet mud, and a lot of wet cement.” - //Travels in Siberia//, Ian Frazier, p. 39.__

__**Meredith Edwards**__

__1. As I joined the serpentine line of students walking up the ungentle hill to the Art and Science Buildings, all of us falling into the vaguely floppy, seal-like gait of the hurried hill-climber, most of us seals apparently late for class, one of us late for an appointment with a tiny ocean of his own past, stretching away and down beside the carved dock of his childhood, an ocean into which this particular seal was going to pour a strong (hopefully unitary) stream of his own presence, to prove that he still is, and so was—that is, provided of course the bathroom and toilet and stall were still there—as I joined the line of seals in short pants and loose short-sleeved shirts and boat shoes and backpacks, and as I felt the fear that accompanied and was in a way caused by the intensity of the wash of feelings and desires and so on that accompanied even the thought of a silly men’s room in a silly building at a silly college where a sad silly boy had spent four years twenty years ago, as I felt all these things, there occurred to me a fact which I think now as I sit up in bed in our motel room, writing, the television softly on, the sharp-haired object of my adoration and absolute center of my entire existence asleep and snoring softly in the bed beside me, a fact which I think now is undeniably true, the truth being that Amherst College in the 1960s was for me a devourer of the emotional middle, a maker of psychic canyons, a whacker of the pendulum of Mood with the paddle of Immoderation. - //The Broom of the System//, David Foster Wallace, p. 206__

__//This sentence, written by Rick Vigorous in David Foster Wallace’s first novel,// The Broom of the System//, as he (Rick) sits reflecting on a revelation he had while waiting in line for the bathroom is not only remarkable because its length, but because it is a gem of first person narration. Writing in first person is extremely difficult to do well, especially if you're trying to be funny. One impulse is to create a narrator who's completely un-self-aware and ignorant and funny in a dramatic irony sort of way (the reader knows the narrator is an idiot or a fool but the narrator hasn’t a clue). What's so refreshing and admirable about this sentence is that Vigorous is both mock-able and hyper-self-aware. You can roll your eyes at him and adore him and feel like he’s spoken your soul, all in the same (very long) sentence.//__

__//What Rick can be made fun of for://__

__//1. His inflated diction. I like to call it mock poetic.//__ __//3. His penchant for long-windedness.//__ __//2. He comes up with metaphors in which he 1) compares people to seals and 2) his past to an ocean that in turn becomes toilet-bowl water.//__ __//3. He equates urinating with existence-proving.//__ __//4. He deploys phrases like "pendulum of Mood" and "paddle of Immoderation" to describe the ups and downs of his college years.//__ __//5. He capitalizes the first letters in "Mood" and "Immoderation."//__

__//And yet, in spite of all this, Rick is not pathetic. Because of the subtle self-effacing humor, because he captures a truth not unfamiliar to the typical Wallace reader, he becomes more than just an object of mockery. The character is goofy and touching, the writing risky, more than a little indulgent, and mischievous.//__

__2. Mrs. Turpin herself was fat but she had always had good skin, and, though she was forty-seven years old, there was not a wrinkle in her face except around her eyes from laughing too much. - "Revelation," //Collected Works//, Flannery O'Connor, p. 635__

__//This sentence, from Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Revelation,” brings to life the kind of un-self-aware character I wrote of above as a cartoonish trick played by some writers. O’Connor, however, makes it work, probably because this is not first-person narration, but free indirect discourse via third-person narration. At this moment, Mrs. Turpin is in a doctor’s waiting room, her black beady eyes surveying the room and casting her refined eye on the uncouth filth surrounding her. In this sentence, she’s comparing her clean, smooth epidermis to that of a surly, scowling teen with so much acne it gives her face a blue hue. The sentence is funny because Mrs. Turpin is searching for ways she is superior to a smug teenager, an action that reveals her own insecurity. Comical, too, is her reason for having wrinkles: it’s not because she’s old that she has them; it’s because she’s merry.//__

__**James Mayr**__

__1. "How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time." - //1984//, George Orwell, Part 1: Chapter 1__

__//As I read Orwell's famous "1984" with my students, it was imperative that the first day of reading included an intriguing hook, something that my class would want to hear more about. Generally when we start a new text, there's a chorus of complaining, claiming that everything we read is too boring, and this novel was of course no exception. But when my students read these lines about the Thought Police, suddenly the nation of Oceania and the fate of protagonist Winston became intriguing. The sentences themselves are short and simple, but they suggest a tone of dull acceptance, as if the Thought Police are just taken for granted as an everyday part of life in futuristic London. Particularly the nonchalance of the phrasing "It was even conceivable that..." suggests that Winston simply takes their presence for granted and that society, on the whole, has no issue with the organization, despite a general lack of understanding about the program that boils down to "guesswork." Many students made connections to historical dictators in Russia, Germany, and Latin America, but a few even made connections to the modern CIA and its wiretapping programs. Ultimately, this is what makes these sentences "gems": Orwell predicts not only the practices of overreaching governments years before the technology is available, but he conveys, in a handful of words, the exact compliance we see today.//__

__2. "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words." - //1984//, George Orwell, Part 1: Chapter 5__

__//What makes Orwell a skilled writer is his understanding of the purpose of language, of the philosophy behind the terminology. The potential for thought control through the use of language is here described by Winston's coworker Syme, whose job is the systematic elimination of extraneous vocabulary from the language, forming a streamlined version dubbed "Newspeak." What's particularly appealing about this sentence is, again, its utter simplicity, but its simultaneous novelty, and even a tinge of irony. For one this, the sentence is only eight words long, but manages to convey a vivid picture of violence and perhaps suffering. But the idea of "destroying" words is so novel that it bears explanation, and Syme freely elaborates for several pages on the machinations of Newspeak, especially how extra words can be eliminated in favor of more general synonyms, ie, that "excellent" and "fantastic" are all forms of the idea "good," and thus can be replaced by new forms like "plusgood" and "doubleplusgood." Thus the sentence would be impossible to utter, once Syme has completed his task, because words like "beautiful" and "destruction" would be quickly culled by the efficiency machine of Big Brother. Yet this is precisely the point Syme, and, by extension, Orwell is trying to make: words allow us to think of concepts, and depriving speakers of language deprives them of a wider range of thought. The conclusion of this simple argument, all contained within this sentence, is that one can either limit his or her vocabulary, and therefore thinking, as in "1984," or can expand his or her vocabulary and thus develop a greater imagination and understanding of the universe.//__

__** Jonathan Johnson: **__

__“The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there." -//The Alchemist//, Paul Coelho__

__//This is a sentence gem for me because of the phrase "sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life." The imagery is beautiful, and I think that it holds a lot of meaning and depth. I also love the thought of "the histories of all people" being connected. Coelho could have easily written this sentence with too many words and too much imagery, but this is the perfect amount and the sentence speaks volumes to me.//__

__"The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming." -//Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows//, J.K. Rowling__

__//This sentence--rather, these sentences--have haunted me since 2007. 3 sentences and ten letters sent chills down my spine when I first read the novel and even today when I think about it. Sometimes less is more, and for this work, that is most certainly the case. In its brevity, it tells quite a bit. But more than that, it establishes a sense of urgency. Almost like Morse code, it is quick and to the point with an important message to deliver. No time for small talk, no time for explanation. The periods come quickly and the phrases are staccato. It is excellent.//__

__**Geo Feliz:**__

__//"Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash. Anything you're ever proud of will be thrown away. And I'm lost inside." - Fight Club,// Chuck Palahniuk.__

__I chose this gem because of Palahniuk's skill of encapsulating the way the main character feels about the hopelessness surrounding him. In three sentences we are overwhelmed by the power of the emotions running through this man. I stopped and thought to myself, "Damn, this guy needs help!" In the first chapter Palahniuk's goal was to make us feel what the character felt and he did so successfully. The raw emotion in this quote embodies what Palahniuk was trying to do. It is an excellent example of characterization.__

__//"It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies or walked along the streets with crowds, that he felt what he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be allowed a chance to live in it like other, even though he was black." - Native Son,// Richard Wright//.//__

__This quote embodies the struggles Bigger Thomas and other young black men might have been feeling at the time. Most young black men felt (and arguably still do) that they were not a part of every day society. Wright is showing us how marginalized young black men were at the time and this quote effectively covers the isolation that Bigger Thomas felt.__

__Justin Smith:__

__"'Adrenal Achilles: the most highly flammable of explosive wildmen any writer has ever enjoyed portraying; especially where his prestige and his appetite are concerned, the most hypersensitive killing machine in the history of warfare. Celebrated Achilles: alienated and estranged by a slight to his honor.'" - //The Human Stain,// Philip Roth__

__I chose these two sentences because they are delivered by a teacher, Coleman Silk, a classics professor trying to excite his undergraduates who are about to embark on Homer's //The Illiad// in the novel. I think Roth manages to stimulate the reader's adrenaline by beginning each sentence with a Homeric epithet followed by a colon and an energetic, impassioned description of Achilles. I also love Roth's use of the semi-colon in the first sentence. The part of the sentence after the semi-colon could not stand alone, but, using the memorable phrase, "the most hypersensitive killing machine in the history of warfare," it enthusiastically conveys Silk's great feeling for this ancient character.__

__**Delfin Ganapin:**__

__//"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and// changed//. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history."// - //Fahrenheit 451//, Ray Bradbury__

__I choose this sentence because of the excellent imagery it uses to introduce us to the main character of the story. The sentence is, in a sense, very visual, moving from one image to another very fluidly. It also give us a very clear view of who Guy Montag is at the beginning of the novel. Bradbury starts by stating outright how his character feels but then build upon his first simple sentence, adding detail that allows the reader to visualize the scene.__

__//"If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive." The Book Thief,// Markus Zusak__

__I choose this sentence because I loved the way it plays with the meaning of words. The words //die// and //alive// often seem like opposites but seeing them side-by-side in the context of this sentence creates and emphasizes the meaning that Zusak wants to communicate to his reader. This is a sentence that shows that a sentence is greater than the sum of its parts and that the words you choose to put in your sentence can truly affect meaning.__

__**Jenna Isabella:**__

__//“The silence at the moment of execution and for a moment or two continuing thereafter, a silence but emphasize by the regular wash of the sea against the hull or the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsman’s eyes being tempted astray, this emphasized silence was gradually disturbed by a sound not easily verbally rendered”// – Herman Melville //Billy Budd, Sailor// (chapter 27)__

__//“The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever”//—F. Scott Fitzgerald //The Great Gatsby// (chapter 8)__

__ //“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him”//—Charles Dickens //A Christmas Carol// __

__While these sentences are all quite long (I have a fondness for long-winded authors) I think they each produced the same response from me: “wow”. I was so impressed by the command of the English language here that I selected them as examples of sentence gems. I really appreciate how each of these authors use verbs in these sentences. I think it makes their language very active and by doing so it paints a picture for the reader—allowing the reader to create that image in their mind’s eye. I think the use of active verbs is extremely effective in creating scenes.__

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">"I've got death inside me."-Don Delillo, //White Noise//I read //White Noise// at sixteen, and loved it deeply (I don't think I'd care much about it now, if I were picking it up for the first time) because it spoke to fear of death in a way nothing ever had to me. The sentence above is simple and devastating to me - I love the colloquial 'got', the casual framing of what is a horrifying, universal truth. I love that Delillo leaves this as 'inside' instead of 'inside of' because somehow that makes it more sinister and elegantly slangy to me.
 * Sabine Chishty**__

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">“He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world.”-J.M. Coetzee, //Disgrace// <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">This is one of my favorite novels in the world - I love Coetzee deeply, and this was the first postcolonial work I really appreciated as such, and continues to remain beautiful to me today. It's no surprise I think of it now, frequently - teaching appeals to me in part because it is always dynamic and interactive, and I have no delusions about the fact that while teaching is a thousand times over about my students and //not// about me, part of why I love this job is precisely because you are not allowed to turn away from where you are in the world; this job makes you think on your role in relation to other people every single day. As a sentence, it packs enormous punch, especially in the larger context of the novel. The 'he' of this sentence is self-absorbed, troubled, and middle-aged, a professor who desperately needs that humility. In one sentence, Coetzee both offers insight into and judgment on him.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">**Morgen Hall**

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">1. She laughed, and then sighed, as if fed up with waiting. Through the glass the ashen light from the street fell on both of them and the shadow of the iron design on the door undulated over her and continued obliquely over him, like a shoulder-belt, while a prismatic rainbow lay on the wall. //And, as often happened with him – though it was deeper this time than ever before – Fyodor suddenly felt – in this glassy darkness – the strangeness of life, the strangeness of its magic, as if a corner of it had been turn back for an instant and he had glimpsed its unusual lining.// <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">//The Gift//, Vladimir Nabokov (emphasis added) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">The lights have just gone out and the 3rd person narration captures the ensuing strangeness revealed to Fyodor. I love Nabokov’s syntax, especially in translation. This novel was translated with his oversight, and in line with his philosophy of translation, the prose follows the syntax from Russian quite closely. In Russian, the words like and as are both expressed by “kak.” This passage is peppered with these (like / as if) clauses, adding in a strong figurative dimension. I love how these figurations are used to position the reader within one perspective (the figurer, you might say - here, Fyodor), within one character's imaginary, even though the narration never goes so far as to use the first person. The second sentence's sparse punctuation (some comma rules have definitely been violated) affects more stream of consciousness than conscientious writer, subtly adding to this skewed third person. Then there’s also Nabokov’s incredible diction, heavy, yet sharp and altogether effortless; the words he uses to describe the scene give such clear images. Amazing how much the reader can see within this sudden darkness! <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">2. “I’m no economist. I know the theory was that lower marginal rates would spur investment and increased productivity, type of thing, and there would be a rising tide that would cause an increase in the tax base that would more than offset the decrease in marginal rates. There is a whole technical theory behind this, though some dismissed this as voodoo science. Type of thing.” <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">//The Pale King,// David Foster Wallace(I know there’s already some DFW up here, but there’s no such thing as too much of this guy…) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">This quote comes from among the transcribed interviews with IRS employees collected for the documentary, //Your IRS Today –// the subject of section 14 of this book. One of Wallace’s charms for me is the way that his prose often mirrors actual speech so perfectly. As prose, these four sentences are really choppy, and seem like bad writing without context and character. Imagine the IRS worker whose 7 page long interview is punctuated with these “type of thing(s);” the awkward phrasing conveys this guy’s voice – albeit a nervous, self-doubting, and boring one –so strongly! His double use of “this” in the second to last sentence, for example: not ungrammatical but definitely awkward. I like this section for how it plays with this true to life diction, though. The fact that “type of thing” is punctuated in two different ways points back to the fact that this is, ostensibly, a transcription done by a human: one who's either inconsistent or trying to mark a variance in the usage of this phrase within #95145822’s speech. _ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Alison Taylor1. "And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected." //East of Eden// John Steinbeck

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">These sentences are beautifully crafted by John Steinbeck. I appreciate that this sentence is definitive and confident. The repetition at the beginning of the two sentences almost creates a sense of alliteration. These two sentences sound like poetic prose and flow nicely as they are said together. They are not only strong in what they are saying but also how they are written. I like the sense of declaration we can hear from Steinbeck. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">2. "Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward." //Let the Great World Spin// Colum McCann <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Colum McCann always does a nice job creating images for his readers. I love how he personifies "simple things" telling us that they rest by our ribcages. The verbs in these sentences make them come alive. I appreciate the repetition in these sentences as well because I think they help this section stand alone. It almost feels as if Colum McCann is telling us a story in these three short short sentences because of the way he starts this metaphor. I also appreciate the way he draws us in here referring to "us" multiple times. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">- <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">**Emily Tudisco** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">1. "But there are neither maps nor exercises to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned, that he smashes styles, that he leans on human pain with no consolation...""Play and Theory of the Duende", Federico García Lorca

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Lorca is so wild-eyed and earnest that sometimes he makes me laugh, but his best moments are when he cuts through to a truth in such a way that he shuts you right up. I always turn to this essay when I need direction in my writing, because his own prose is so visceral (in the general sense of physical but also in the more literal sense of //gutting//) that it knocks you off your feet, forces you to pause and gather your wits again. And when you do, everything has shifted around you. He does that here, having wandered off in a humorous tangent about the different models of writing, only to turn around and strike, sears you with the image of pressing glass into a wound and then keeps feeding you clause after clause, refuses to let you look away. Only a few lines before he was joking about arsenic lobsters and maybe you thought, that's writing, but no, it's a deadly medicine. He delivers you to a safe place and then tears it down to make his point about art, beauty, and brutality. For all this essay's weirdly racialized romantic nonsense, he does push past to a gorgeous tension that feels so true you can't imagine how you never understood it before, and that is what makes him ultimately worthy of reading.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">2. "My aunt was blind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink. She couldn't see the ceiling dusty with flies, the ugly maroon walls, the bottles and sticky spoons. I can't forget the smell. Like sticky capsules filled with jelly. My aunt, a little oyster, a little piece of meat on an open shell for us to look at. Hello, hello. As if she had fallen into a well."//The House on Mango Street//, Sandra Cisneros <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">I've been living and breathing this book since September (we're almost done teaching it) and I'm somehow still not sick of it, probably because lines like these catch me every single time. This vignette is disturbing on a number of levels--Esperanza, almost but not quite stepping out of childhood, believes she is directly responsible for the death of her aunt--but especially because of the acute body horror Cisneros manages to convey with a few simple words. I feel an incredible nauseous grief every time I encounter the image of this woman trapped in her bed, beneath a buzzing wall of flies waiting to descend (this moment alone is so ominous). Grateful and ashamed for every minute her niece spends flinching and disgusted next to her, every time her tired husband deigns to take her to the bathroom--none of this overtly stated, but sketched out through careful use of light and color and sense. We as readers see what Aunt Lupe cannot, but mostly we feel, Cisneros weaving together texture, touch, closeness, and revulsion until we, too, are ashamed, want to escape into fresh air and leave behind the burden of caring when it is most difficult. The body here is little more than decaying flesh, and we are complicit in Esperanza's barely sympathetic fear and disdain for her aunt's mortality, vulnerability--"a little oyster, a little piece of meat," ugh, ugh, ugh. The mind, slowly sinking down into the well, rattling around in the pathetic vessel that has betrayed it. It's hard to call this moment beautiful, except in a vaguer sense of pure power. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">**Johanna Diaz**1. <span style="display: block; font-family: Palantino,Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">"While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple." -Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: Palantino,Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre there are many sentence gems to choose from, she uses plenty of imagery in her writing and you can visualize exactly what she is describing in the text. I picked this particular sentence because it is a piece of art, we visualize and connect with the character. This is something women can connect to as they read and a man can see a woman doing this. A woman looking at herself in the glass and perhaps thinking about something deeper. You can start with simple things like fixing a strand of hair, but your thoughts can lead you anywhere. Am I getting older? Does he think I am beautiful? Am I worthy? <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: Palantino,Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">2. "When the game started, Molly Lou Melon caught the football, ran under the legs of Ronald Durkin, and scored a touchdown." -Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon, Patty Lovell <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: Palantino,Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">I chose this sentence gem from a picture book because I believe this activity can be introduced to students with simple text and then you can apply it to more complex text. With this I would have students select the text and categorize it under the type of sentence it falls under. In the Anderson reading they would have to note if it contains an introductory phrase, interrupting phrase, or a closing phrase. If it contains more than one they could create an additional category called combination platter. I am going to try this out with my 7th grade class with picture books first and then move onto other types of literature. I like that this doesn't seem like a lesson, but more of an artistic process. -- **Ashley Schoenthal:**

1. "He said no more. He knelt by her side; she looked at him, so beautiful and unhappy that her misery became his misery; he, too, felt that there was something to be deplored. But in spite of all she had said, he still saw love in her eyes, and the pain on her quivering lips was also love. He believed her eyes more than he believed her words” <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #181818; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: right;">// - Narcissus and Goldmund // by Hermann Hesse, p.110

I fell in love with this novel because Hesse’s writing is captivating. There is beautiful imagery throughout //Narcissus and Goldmund//. This sentence depicts a scene where Goldmund has finally caught up with Lydia, who had fled from him. She is distraught, and confronts him about him flirting with another woman in front of her. The way Hesse uses language is captivating. “The pain on her quivering lips was also love” is a beautiful line that stands out every time I read this book. Hesse seamlessly uses breathtaking figurative language in his writing. This sentence gem is one of many that I have marked in this book. Lydia, who has been telling him how horrible he is, leads Goldmund to a realization. He sees her pain as a sign of her love for him. This interaction continues for pages, but this sentence in particular shows the change in Goldmund’s perspective. He realizes something about Lydia, and more importantly, about love. This novel was published in 1930, yet it is still so relevant. There are many concepts about love and relationships, such as the one in this sentence gem, which will always be understood. This sentence depicts a scene where love and hate are intertwined, and through her pain he sees love. The two feelings are often confusing. Here, Goldmund realizes that while Lydia is rejecting him with her words, her physical reaction shows love. There can be a discrepancy between what is being said, and the feelings behind it. Hesse illustrates so much in only a few, powerful sentences.

2. “Now he became aware of an entirely new sensation: pinpricks? No, because they were soft and without pain. Tiny, cold, featherlike feelings peppered his body and face. He put out his tongue again, and caught one of the dots of cold upon it. It disappeared from his awareness instantly; but he caught another, and another. The sensation made him smile.” - //The Giver// by Lois Lowry, p.80-81

I loved this novel. So many sentences stood out, and this is one of them. This sentence gem is describing Jonas receiving the memory of sledding, and he is catching snowflakes in his mouth. The depiction of this scene is so vivid, and Lowry masterfully crafts sentences to describe memories The Giver “gives” to Jonas. It is such a fantastic novel, as each “memory” is portrayed perfectly. Jonas is encountering objects and situations in his sessions with The Giver that he has never experienced before. Since Jonas is unfamiliar with these memories, it makes sense that Lowry has to be creative with describing them. Jonas had never experienced snow, and in this first encounter, it almost forces the readers to experience it as if it was their first time as well. Lowry is brilliant in the way he describes the simplest experiences, and this sentence is a wonderful example. Even though the previous chapter ends explaining that he will receive the memory of snow, it is almost unnecessary. Reading this description of a boy being “peppered” with cold, soft dots that disappear on his tongue, it is easy for the reader to presume what is happening.

Kerry Storace Sentence Gems

“I saw them then- pigeons, not water. But whatever relief I felt at seeing birds, it dissipated when that winged mass drew a shade on the sun. I tell you, it was night at three o’clock in the afternoon. My world snapped into a box. The air staled. A kind of sleet (the birds’ dung) fell from that winged ceiling” (Timberlake 13).

I chose this sentence because it provokes feeling for the reader. The author uses metaphors and similes (winged sky, dung like sleet, etc.). The author also uses the character’s dialect (“I tell you…”) to create tension in the scene. The reader can not only picture the action, they can feel it and smell it and imagine their reaction.

“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic” (Tartt 770).

I chose this sentence because the author uses imagery to explain a concept. In other words, it is impossible to define why art speaks to us but the author has used actual objects and descriptors (middle zone, rainbow edge, surfaces, etc.) to describe why art is important. When this passage is read within the context of the novel, it provokes an intense emotional response from the reader. It allows the reader to picture a feeling. Sources Cited: Timberlake, Amy, and David Homer. //One Came Home//. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Print. Tartt, Donna. //The Goldfinch//. New York City: Little, Brown and Company, 2013. Print.


 * Grace Fauquet**

"Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me - so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins. Another meeting." - //Zami: A New Spelling of My Name//, Audre Lorde, p. 255

//I love the imagery of the self growing and stretching as a result of loving. I love that this sentence breathes with audible spaces caused by commas and dashes, giving a sense of the slow stretching that Lorde talks about.//

"Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay's knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay's knee" - //To the Lighthouse//, Virginia Woolf, pp. 78-9

//This set of sentences does what Virginia Woolf does best - take a simple moment and describe the consciousness behind it that one cannot help but feel exactly there in the moment. I suppose I have a penchant for commas, because there is an abundance in this passage, but they are used to describe this lovely image of intimacy being these "sacred tablets" housed in the desired person that if only she could get through to, would bring them unity. The almost triumphant ending of the repeated "not" and "nothing" brought to a rapid decrescendo when you realize that she still is simply hugging the woman's knees.//

"Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye." - //The Bluest Eye//, Toni Morrison, p. 206
 * Megumi Matsumoto**

//I chose this passage because Morrison is making a powerful statement about love, and captured my attention with her use of repetition. I also love her word choice, such as "neutralized" and "frozen." Despite describing a concept that can't be "seen," her language creates a vivid imagery of what "the love of a free man" is like. The phrase "frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye," takes the reader back to the scene of Pecola's rape without directly saying so.//

"Everything was ready to begin . . .There was another flourish; and then the trio dashed spontaneously into the triumphant swing of the waltz. It was as though the room were instantly flooded with water. After a moment’s hesitation first one couple, then another, leapt into midstream, and went round and round in the eddies. The rhythmic swish of the dancers sounded like a swirling pool. By degrees the room grew perceptibly hotter. The smell of kid gloves mingled with the strong scent of flowers. The eddies seemed to circle faster and faster, until the music wrought itself into a crash, ceased, and the circles were smashed into little separate bits. The couples struck off in different directions, leaving a thin line of elderly people stuck fast to the walls, and here and there a piece of trimming or a handkerchief or a flower lay upon the floor. There was a pause, and then the music started again, the eddies whirled, the couples circled round in the them, until there was a crash, and the circles were broken up into separate pieces" - //The Voyage Out//, Virginia Woolf, p. 169.

// I chose this passage because Virginia Woolf's word choice and commas makes the reader see, feel, and hear what is happening. This section of Woolf's novel made me feel I was present for the characters' ship ride. I especially love how Woolf implemented commas in "first one couple, then another...." to visually show how people gradually joined the dance. She does this successfully throughout the passage, and I appreciate how she takes advantage of using commas as purposeful pauses for the reader. //

**Abdul R. Siddiqui**
"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday." -- //The Stranger//, Albert Camus (1942).

I picked this quote because I feel it is a classic example of saying very, very little to convey a lot of meaning. The protagonist is affected by his mother's death, but not in the way we might expect. He also seems to be at a loss for words, and maybe even seems a bit unsure of how to make sense of it all (considering the fact that time is not clicking for him, so maybe the whole situation has not been processed yet). Either way, regardless of how he feels, he says very little so there are no extra words and it successfully leaves us eager to read further.

"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” //No Country For Old Men//, Cormac McCarthy (2005).

I picked this quote because it is once again proof that very minimal words can completely have a strong effect, if you leave the reader guessing. This is the kind of sentence that an entire essay can be built on (and would be great for one those critical lens assignments) because it is something that can be debatable, it encourages discussion and leaves an open-ended response because it provides no specific details. In short, a good thing for someone philosophical to say.


 * Deborah Akinwunmi**

“Then she turned and left the stage, left him there alone, standing and facing the crowd, which began spontaneously the collective murmur of his name.” The Giver, Lois Lowry, p. 64.

This quote speaks volume to the feelings the protagonist, Jonas, experiences in the book, The Giver. I chose this quote because it symbolizes the loneliness and individuality Jonas is confronted with in the novel. In this specific instance, Jonas is not only left alone to adjust to this new change physically, but he will soon feel an emotional loneliness. He alone can can bear the burden of truth, and his world can merely look at him and call his name, but never actually join him on stage.

“The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Island, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us.” Paper Towns, John Green, p.11.

I believe this quote speaks to a very human condition that may often go unnoticed. I chose this quote because I believe it to be real and true. In some capacity, big or small, many of us have gone through some kind of a miracle. What is also interesting about this quote is the speaker’s openness to the term “miracle.” “Miracle,” is not only this benevolent phenomena, but it is also an amazing and almost impossible thing that has occurred, and that has gone beyond what some may believe could be possible. It can be a Nobel Prize winner, or getting struck by lightning. They are all miracles, and we will all experience some piece of this in our lives.